Wear absorbing plates are commonly used to line chutes, hoppers, trunnions, chain runs, loading decks and other locations which are exposed to excessive wearing. For example, hardened wear plates are used to line surfaces over which cement, sand, gravel, or other abrasives flow. The objective is to reduce the rate of wear caused by such abrasives. Ordinarily, wear plates are formed of high grade steels having better abrasion resistant characteristics than the materials forming adjacent portions of the chute, hopper, trunnion, etc. The wear plate thus extends the useful life of the chute, hopper, etc.
Wear plates are normally affixed at wear points by welding, bolting, riveting, clamping or other relatively permanent means. Such forms of attachment can make it difficult, inconvenient, time consuming, labour intensive and/or expensive to remove and replace a wear plate which has worn out. Particular difficulties can arise if grinders or cutting torches are required to remove a worn out wear plate, for example if there is a hazard of fire or explosion in the adjacent surroundings, as is common in installations such as grain elevators, oil or gas refineries, saw mills, etc. Moreover, wear plates are often located in cramped working spaces which increase the difficulty of removing and replacing a worn out wear plate.
The present invention overcomes the foregoing difficulties by providing a wear plate which can be firmly magnetically retained at a wear point yet readily removed and replaced therefrom. The magnetized wear plate retainer also has impact absorbing characteristics which can improve the wear plate's capability to resist wear.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,340,616 discloses a method for decreasing surface wear by incorporating magnetic material into the surface to provide a sacrificial wear-resistant surface. For example, the wear resistant capability of a pipe which conveys an abrasive slurry can be improved. But this does not address the aforementioned difficulties encountered in removing and replacing a worn out wear plate.